Opinion

THE LAST WORD: By Andrew M. Mwenda Why efforts to make peasant farmers go commercial are unlikely to yield success President Yoweri Museveni spent a week in Luwero District on Operation Wealth Creation. The president was teaching farmers to adopt modern farming techniques in order to increase their output and …

OPINION: By Cissy Kagaba  In a bizarre move, as reported in the media, Parliament is proposing to gag media. Speaker of Parliament Rebecca Kadaga’s move seems to be part of a well-scripted plan to determine what is published by the media. Her demand to investigate journalists for what she perceives as …

OPINION: By Andrew Mwenda Why criticising MPs for demanding more benefits is misguided and what can be done about it Our MPs want Shs200 million each to buy cars. They want their wages and allowances increased. They also want Shs68 million spent on their funeral when they die. The public is …

OPINION: By Fred Muwema  The current local and International buzz about Uganda’s Rolex (a rolled chapati with eggs and vegetables) appears to be restoring a little pride to some Ugandans. In June 2016, CNN named Uganda’s Rolex as the fastest growing fast food in Africa. Since then, the Rolex festival …

THE LAST WORD: By Andrew M.Mwenda How do you govern a country that has average public spending per capita of $450 annually in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP)? Is it possible to govern it using the same strategies as a country whose public spending is $22,000 per person annually? Yet all …

On March 31 2016, the total value of all loans in Uganda’s commercial banking industry was Shs21.7 trillion of which Shs528 billion were non-performing loans (or “bad loans”) i.e. 2.64% of the total. Under the effective oversight of Bank of Uganda, especially its director for supervision; Justine Bagyenda (known in …

Why Rwandans tell pollsters they are free while abstract standards of freedom say the country is repressive The view that Rwanda is a police state is such an entrenched position among critics of President Paul Kagame that it has become gospel truth. Last week on my radio talk show on …

Why good leadership at a national level is not enough to make a country successful economically THE LAST WORD: Let us do a thought experiment. It is often said that the problem of Africa is poor leadership: if our continent had leaders dedicated to serving their people rather than lining …

 Stop faking holiness. You supported and defended a government that banned all activities of political parties THE LAST WORD: Last week, Oxfam Executive Director, Winnie Byanyima, accused me of losing my soul by “supporting dictatorship” and “defending gross human rights abuses”. I asked her to name a single incident where …

Why the competition for power is always a quarrel over delusions rather than a contest over public policy I argued in this column last week that governments in poor countries cannot govern by delivering a large basket of public goods and services associated with a modern state because they don’t …